All that should not be necessary for the simple reason that the option
was available for years as a simple change using about:config. It might
have been used by only a few, although, having read lot of moans on line
about the option being removed, I contest that, but all Mozilla had to
do was leave it alone. There was no need to remove it.
Maybe 50 people complaining publicly about a specific feature (or lack thereof)? Even if we say they represent 10% of the people who find it's removal to be frustrating, that's still only 500 users out of 250 million (according to Firefox Telemetry). There is a good chance that Mozilla, at some point, tracked (using Firefox Telemetry) how many users were using the "put the tabs at the bottom" option and found it was a tiny %.
Why would you include extra code, that will need maintaining, just to appease 0.0002% of your userbase?
They have retained the ability to do what you want, they have simply removed a part of the code, that was massively underused, that made it easy.
I also use the Waterfox browser, based on FF, and the option is still
there. Also it is available on the Palemoon browser.
So why don't I use one of those? I do, both, and the Vivaldi browser as
well. But I have been told that I ought to use FF and stay clear of any
others, so I am trying to do as instructed. Incidently, that is my only
niggle with FF so far.
From what I have read of the discussions on here, you were not *instructed* to use Firefox at all. Advised that it is likely the easiest way to achieve what you want, yes, but *instructed*? Hardly.
You were told that you absolutely have the right to choose which browser you use, but you must respect that IF you choose a browser that does not conform to using technologies (such as WebRTC) the way more mainstream browsers do, then you are condemning yourself to not being able to use those technologies.
You do still retain the freedom and right to use those other browsers - nobody is stopping you. You also retain the freedom and right to take the code for Palemoon and Waterfox and add WebRTC support yourself. You also retain the freedom and right to take the code for mainstream Firefox and add your "bottom tabs" option back in.
Indeed, you could fork any of those projects and create your own browser with all the best bits from each of them... but then you'd run the risk of having people complain that you didn't include that one thing that they wanted... and we would come full circle.
Grant.
